Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Obama Admin. OKs Aborted Baby Brain Experiments

President Obama's Food and Drug Administration has authorized StemCells, Inc. to use brain tissue from the remains of unborn children killed through abortion for clinical trials with more than a dozen patients to determine the effect on age-related macular degeneration of the eye.

Separately, President Obama's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has OKd the use of aborted babies to produce artificial flavor enhancers for PepsiCo products.

StemCells, Inc. is engaged in the research, development, and commercialization of cell-based therapeutics and tools for use in stem cell-based research and drug discovery. . . .

The Company is also conducting a Phase I/II clinical trial in chronic spinal cord injury in Switzerland and has received authorization from the FDA to initiate a Phase I/II clinical trial in dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD). In addition, the Company is pursuing preclinical studies of its HuCNS-SC cells in Alzheimer's disease. StemCells also markets stem cell research products, including media and reagents, under the SC Proven(R) brand.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved experiments using brain tissue from aborted unborn babies to treat macular degeneration. StemCells Inc. will inject fetal brain stem cells into the eyes of up to 16 patients to study the cells’ effect on vision.

In its press release announcing the clinical trial, StemCells Inc. was careful to refer to the fetal brain material as “purified human neural stem cell product” or HuCNS-SC cells, rather than “fresh human fetal brain tissue,” a description which can be found elsewhere on its website.

“StemCells Inc. is not using embryonic stem cells. A five-day-old human being at the embryonic stage does not have a brain, but a fetus at 10 or 20 weeks of development with visible fingers, toes and ears has a functioning brain,” said MCCL [Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life] Executive Director Scott Fischbach. “Developing human beings in the womb are treated simply as raw material for laboratory experimentation by StemCells Inc. and other companies seeking to monetize aborted unborn children.”

The misleadingly-named Birth Defects Research Laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle is known within the research community as a top government distributor of fetal tissue. The lab has been sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for over four decades, according to a report in WORLD Magazine. The Puget Sound Business Journal stated that the lab “in 2009 filled more than 4,400 requests for fetal tissue and cell lines.”

Dr. David Prentice, an internationally recognized expert on stem cells and cloning, cites trials in which fetal stem cells have been used unsuccessfully to treat Parkinson’s disease. The New York Times called the outcome of a 2001 study “devastating” after “the patients writhed and jerked uncontrollably.” Another large clinical trial published in 2003 showed similar results.

“The use of morally illicit material in the biomedical industry violates the ‘do no harm’ principle that has governed the practice of medicine for millennia,” Fischbach said. “Adult stem cells offer the ethical and efficacious alternative. Unborn babies deserve dignity, not dissection and destruction.”

As reported last year in The New American, the [PepsiCo] shareholders had filed a resolution with the SEC after Pepsi ignored tens of thousands of concerned pro-life individuals who had expressed their disgust and opposition to its contracting with Senomyx, a biotech company that tests its food additive products using a process that includes fetal cells from aborted babies.

In a decision delivered by letter February 28, the SEC said that Pepsi’s research and development agreement with Senomyx, which includes the use of aborted fetal remains in flavor enhancement research, falls under “ordinary business operations” for the soft drink company. According to LifeSiteNews.com, the SEC decision came in response to a 36-page document submitted by Pepsi through its attorneys in January 2012. “In that filing, PepsiCo pleaded with the SEC to reject the shareholders’ resolution filed in October 2011 that the company ‘adopt a corporate policy that recognizes human rights and employs ethical standards which do not involve using the remains of aborted human beings in both private and collaborative research and development agreements,’” reported the pro-life news site.

Debi Vinnedge of Children of God for Life, which had originally exposed the relationship between Pepsi and Senomyx, said that she was “appalled by the apathy and insensitivity” of PepsiCo and the Obama administration’s SEC. “We’re not talking about what kind of pencils PepsiCo wants to use,” she said in a statement. “We are talking about exploiting the remains of an aborted child for profit. Using human embryonic kidney to produce flavor enhancers for their beverages is a far cry from routine operations!”